Storm in a tea cup: The weather thread

[JVL]

The cold snap here was forecast well in advance but still seemed to catch Deutsche Bahn off guard - our train journey to Dresden took 14 hours instead of 6. Anyway, was absolutely sodding freezing over the weekend as we wandered around the many sights in the city - and it gave us plenty of excuses to keep popping into cafes and bars to warm up...

[San Bernardhinault]

A fairly monster storm seems to be developing this week for California and the west (and, presumably, further east later). A big low pressure off the coast now is moving in - and it will tap into an atmospheric river on Wednesday to Thursday. These are bands of very high moisture air coming from the tropics which occasionally get drawn north by big pressure systems. They're sometimes called Pineapple Expresses, because the water is coming from around Hawaii and is generally warm. By Thursday, though, this will combine with a cold front to the north, meaning that lots of the water will fall as snow in the higher elevations. We're apparently looking at up to 5 inches of rain in the Santa Barbara area, which could be terrible news for the people near the burn areas from last year. Better is that we could be looking at feet of extra snow in the Sierra Nevada, which is great - particularly this late in the year. We're low on snowpack again, although it's been recovering through March. Topping it up this late means that some snow melt will continue a lot later into the summer. Given that we're heading back into drought conditions again, after only 12 months off, this is hugely helpful. But it might be dangerous on the Central Coast midweek.

[tee rex]

Stolen from Twitter: Equinox in Scotland, a study in light and shade:

[Ginger Yellow]

Seems like I had the aircon installed just in time as we've skipped spring and gone straight to summer. 27 degrees tomorrow. In April.

[Capybara]

I came on to be the first to moan about today's unbearably warm weather, but it looks like I was beaten to it.

[blameless]

Stolen from Twitter: Equinox in Scotland, a study in light and shade:

As we say back home: "Welcome to Scotland. If you don't like the weather, wait half an hour - it'll be doing something different by then."

And yes, 8c in England a week ago and 28c today is somewhat ridiculous.

[Gangster Octopus]

The air-con at work's broken down. It was only serviced last month...

[Toby Gymshorts]

Presumably by the same people who did the lifts.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Streuth, I don't half love this weather. Bloody fantastic. Hottest April day in south east England since 1949, with 28.8 C recorded at Northolt today. Trouble is, one day of it isn't enough. It just rubs it in how great it would be to live in, say, Andalucia, where spring would be like this most of the time, not just on some freak day.

Edit: it maxed at 26C in Cambridge today I think. Forecast max for the next 4 days, in order: 23, 21, 18, 15, then lost of 15s for a week or so. At least I'll have an opportunity to use the rest of the fuel I bought for the fire this winter.

[Gangster Octopus]

Air con being fixed. I hadn't realised that the hottest place was just down the road...

[Snake Plissken]

Hopefully the weather tempts people out to Levenshulme Night Market.

[Ginger Yellow]

This lightning over London is pretty eerie. Very frequent, but totally silent.

[Antepli Ejderha]

50k lightning strikes last night in the UK apparently.

[Janik]

It was pretty noisy when it swept over North Herts at ~2am. Sleeping through it was not an option. The rumble from the thunder was pretty well continuous.

I think there was a storm like this a year or so back, where the lightening was basically incessant, a strike or flash every second or so. But I don't recall Britain having storms of this type before that. They seem more tropical, somehow.

[blameless]

Noisy in this part of S.London too - we were sandwiched between two pockets of intense activity, so were getting flashes and rumbles both front and back of the house.

SE England seems to be totally incapable of having rain in warm weather nowadays without it turning into a thunderstorm, but this was something else entirely.

[hobbes]

The continuous low rumble was amazing. Not like normal storms. This went on for 4 hours.

[Ginger Yellow]

It did get noisier about 20 minutes after I posted. Still no traditional thunderclaps though.

[Antepli Ejderha]

Despite the storms last night it's still incredibly humid in Greenwich, been out for a walk and apart from the occasional breeze by the Thames it's rather unpleasant. My app says 23° but it feels much warmer than that.

[Wouter D]

An arrival hall at Eindhoven Airport partially flooded. Not everyone ended up getting their luggage.

Fortunately, I was safely cooped up in a cinema downtown, thoroughly enjoying Isle Of Dogs.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/abc/status/1000856893450047493?s=21

[Lang Spoon]

Crikey.

[Lang Spoon]

Athlone in ten years.

[San Bernardhinault]

Are these rain bands from the tropical storms in the Gulf? Or are they something else?

[ursus arctos]

Separate system from Alberto, which is in the Gulf and has yet to make landfall

https://twitter.com/capitalweather/status/1000858135291138049?s=21

[Satchmo Distel]

Florida Panhandle will get some serious flooding from Alberto. We had heavy rain across SWFL for 48 hours which ended mid-afternoon today, but no floods AFAIK.